Food Lust People Love: chocolate sprinkles

Friday, November 7, 2014

Chocolate Shot Cookies

Rich and buttery, like all shortbead cookies should be, these refrigerate-and-slice chocolate shot cookies also contain rolled oats. They are easy to make, keep well in the freezer and will be a welcome addition to your holiday cookie baking.

Welcome to the last day of Cookie Week, hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl In the Little Red Kitchen! We hope you've enjoyed this week as much as we have!

On to the final cookies!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I am a cookbook junkie. I have a very hard time passing by a stack of books at a garage sale or car boot sale or estate sale or charity shop without rifling through them and looking for cookbooks. Sometimes I get lucky and find an already coveted book and sometimes I find a treasure previously unknown to me.

The book whence came this slightly adapted recipe is one of the latter finds. It’s called Heart of the Home – Notes from a Vineyard Kitchen and it was published in 1986. According to author/illustrator Susan Branch, it is now out of print but copies can still be found on Ebay. It’s a beautiful book, hand lettered and illustrated with watercolors and each page is a joy to behold. Plus each recipe I’ve tried has been a keeper. It's so sad when beautiful books like this one are out of print so I am delighted to have found a copy.

Ingredients for 2 1/2 dozen cookies
1 cup or 225g butter, softened
1 cup or 125g powdered or icing sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1 cup or 90g rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup or 150g chocolate shots or sprinkles

Method
Cream the butter and the sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Add in the vanilla and beat again.

In a separate bowl, combine your flour, baking powder and salt.

Add them into the butter/sugar bowl, along with the oatmeal and beat until well combined.

Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for about half an hour. A word of warning: If you chill it for too long it gets completely stiff and unmalleable. (<new word I just made up. Oxford Dictionaries, take note. Why is it not a word?)

Cut the dough into three pieces and roll them into logs. Pile your chocolate shots in the middle of a clean tray with sides and roll the logs in them till you have full coverage.

Wrap the logs in more cling film and refrigerate for at least two hours or until you are ready to bake. (These can also be frozen.)

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and use a thin serrated knife to slice off however many cookies you are wanting to bake. The original recipe says to use an ungreased cookie sheet but I lined mine with a silicone baking mat.

Bake in your preheated oven for about 9-11 minutes. The tops don’t brown much but the bottoms get lovely and golden. The bottom is definitely the more attractive side. :)

Food Lust People Love: Rich and buttery, like all shortbead cookies should be, these refrigerate-and-slice chocolate shot cookies also contain rolled oats. They are easy to make, keep well in the freezer and will be a welcome addition to your holiday cookie baking.

Just out of the oven

Enjoy!

Take a look to see what might inspire you to break out the butter and sugar this weekend.

Black Pepper Fig Biscotti by Crumb
Chocolate Fudge Brownie Cookies by Cravings of a Lunatic
Chocolate Peppermint Crinkles by Jen's Favorite Cookies
Chocolate Shot Cookies by Food Lust People Love
Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies by Cooking in Stilettos
Pumpkin Mallowmars by The Girl In The Little Red Kitchen
Soft and Chewy Butterscotch Chip Pudding Cookies by Dinners, Dishes and Desserts
The Best Gingersnaps by Mind Over Batter
Thick & Soft Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies {Gluten Free & Dairy Free} by The Cooking Actress

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Sunday, April 21, 2013

Brigadeiros

Chewy caramel insides are covered with chocolate sprinkles to make these sweets, essential at any Brazilian party. They are so easy to make too!

This week, #SundaySupper is celebrating celebrating. What I mean is, we are sharing recipes that are perfect for showers. Baby showers, bridal showers or whatever lovely gathering you are planning this month. Our host is Brandie from Home Cooking Memories, so I think she will appreciate that I reached back to one of my favorite times to share this party favorite.

Brigadeiros are an easy sweet treat that make an essential appearance at every celebration in Brazil. We lived there for almost six years when our daughters were little. In fact, both of them started school (a couple of years apart, of course) at the Omega School, which was a few blocks from our house, in the small neighborhood of Macaé called Vivendas da Lagoa. It was a tiny operation with fewer than 30 students ranging from the three-year-olds to one sixth grader, with most children falling on the younger end of the chart. Enrollment was so small most years that when one child celebrated a birthday, the whole crowd was invited. The best part was that they all played well together, regardless of age or grade level. We missed that interaction later, in bigger schools.

In those days, Macaé was a small oilfield town, short on amenities. (I’ve been told it has progressed greatly since then, although I haven’t been back.) Grocery shopping was limited and it was a challenge to do it all in one day, especially with at least one small child in tow. Chicken was only purchased at the chicken shop, beef, pork and sausages at the butcher. If you wanted fresh vegetables, the best place was Hortifruti, the covered market. Fresh milk was in limited supply so we bought UHT (ultra high temperature) milk that came in Tetrapaks.

For cheese, there were a couple of places you might get lucky, just don’t expect anything fancy. But one thing that every shop had, even the little corner store in our neighborhood, were cans of the sweet sticky paste used for making brigadeiros. When we left Brazil (and the supply I had brought in our shipment was exhausted) we had to learn how to make them without it. Because, as I am sure you will agree once you try one, life is too short to go without brigadeiros. Fortunately, it isn’t that hard since you start with sticky condensed milk, available everywhere.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1 tablespoon butter plus a little extra for buttering your hands when you are rolling the little balls

1 (14 ounce or 397g) can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)

10.5 oz or 298g packet chocolate rice or sprinkles (You may not use them all.)

60-70 tiny paper muffin liners

Method

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, pour in the condensed milk, then sift in the cocoa and add in the butter.

Cook over a medium heat, stirring gently to make sure it is well combined.

Keep stirring and cooking until it is quite thick, about 10-15 minutes.

Remove from the heat and let rest until cool enough to handle. It will stiffen up even more as it cools.

Put your chocolate sprinkles in a small bowl or other deep container.

Rub a little butter into both of your palms. Using a small spoon, scoop up a little of the sweet paste and roll it into small balls between your palms.

Use one spoon to scrape it off into your buttered palm.

Roll it between your buttered palms to get a smooth ball.

Drop it gently into the small bowl of chocolate sprinkles and roll it around until coated. Place each covered ball in a paper muffin liner. Place on a serving tray.